A Miksang Moment

The other day I was sitting on the front steps of my partner's house. She was gardening and I was sitting down because of a back injury. It was sunny and hot and I was relaxing where I was. My mind emptied and I sat there taking in what was happening around me. At first I noticed the small reddish brown ants scurrying back and forth amongst the sidewalk bricks. Then a bird flew overhead. My eyes drifted down to the right and landed on a small patch of bachelors buttons in bloom at the bottom corner of the steps. I noticed their colour first-a cobalt  blue fringe with a white body on each petal and a grape coloured centre. I felt my body soften and my heart began to open in curiosity. As I gazed at the flowers I noticed some small insects hovering around the flowers. Now and then they would dart in and land for a few seconds sipping something from the centre of the flower. Next a few bees came buzzing in moving slowly from one flower to  the other gathering pollen. As I continued to watch a few ants climbed carefully up the stems of the plant inspecting the flowers at the top. Then they would walk back down and go up another stem. By this time I was quite fascinated by what was going in this little patch of flowers. And then to add to my amazement a brown beetle and then a greenish beetle with a triangular shaped body climbed into the bottom of the plants.

I became aware that time had virtually stood still as I sat there engrossed with what was happening near me. Listening quietly to myself I sensed a lightness in my body and heart. I felt a quiet kind of joy in my whole being, my back pain had diminished. Here was something on the surface so mundane, so insignificant and yet so deeply moving. This was a profound moment for me. As I sat there contemplating all of this it moved me to consider how I had opened myself to an experience of nature as part of me, as part of my inner experience. I realized that this was a relationship, that I had opened myself to "be" with nature. Or was it the other way round, or both?

Here was a felt resonance between a human being and nature. It was like a waking dream perhaps foretelling in a way how we might invite nature into our own inner family. Imagine for a moment if we could be in relationship like this always. Could we treat what has touched our core, our heart, our soul in this way as we have before? I can't, not now. To include nature as an important part of our inner family requires us to see in a different way, to open ourselves to experiences that are like dreams yet we are awake.

In my heart I now understand that if we can see and appreciate nature in this way, in the deepest parts of ourselves, the part of ourselves we barely talk to, that we couldn't do what we do to the world, to nature, to ourselves.

Bachelor Buttons and My Heart

Broadening the Definition of Family

It's been quite a while since I wrote for this blog. Since that time my heart and soul have called me to change my life. I have closed my Pilates studio and sold my house. Over the next year I will embark on a journey to explore my own artists soul. In my heart I feel this  action is freeing myself from the oppression of the culture that I live in.

There are two themes that have become clear for me over the last year or so. The first is the need for the  development of a gift based society rather than one based on self-interest. The second theme is to begin changing our view of nature as separate from humanity. This blog will focus on the theme of our separaton from nature and imagining something different.

Our industrial technological society  separates us from our roots in the natural world.  With more and more technological gadgets and growing urbanization in our lives the pace of separation is increasing. Without an understanding  that this is happening it is very difficult to convey to individuals the serious nature of what is going on.  I realized what we might consider is an idea of the potential feeling we can have when we think of members of our family. What do you feel in your heart when you imagine a loved one being injured, is missing, has been abused or dies. Does it bring up difficult emotions or a reaction to not even go there because it is too upsetting. Why should we consider this difficult kind of imagining?

The natural world, the beautiful intricate ecosystems that form it both living and non living are the basis for all human life. All that we use to survive and thrive in one form or another comes from the natural world.  Yet we have developed a global economic system that is devouring and destroying the natural world in pursuit of profit. The market and corporations in particular have no heart, no conscience, no morality other than greed and money. Since most of the checks  against their rapaciousness have been removed there is little to stop the basis for all human life being turned into fodder for the maw of the  corporate machine.  It is souless and as such  is the antithesis of life, it is evil.

The very thing that breathes life into our bodies, our lives, is soul. It  also breathes life into the natural world and is called anima mundi, the soul of the world. We humans through corporate globalization are in the process of destroying the very soul of our world.

We are all complicit in this killing and this is why I bring up imagining  a loved family member being hurt . I am making the heart based case for considering that nature the very basis of human life is actually a member of each and everyone of our families.